


Ficlet Archives

by ArvenaPeredhel



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-14 15:52:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16915818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArvenaPeredhel/pseuds/ArvenaPeredhel
Summary: An ongoing catalogue of the ficlets I've written, moved here from my writing Tumblr.





	1. A Long Time Ago

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a now-noncanonical scene in the original Marvel Star Wars.

He runs.

Across the stars, beyond the blazing twin suns of his homeworld, past nebulae and novae, through aging red giants and newborn white dwarfs - his eyes behold far more than any frail human, and yet still he runs.

Behind him, its cape tossing in the solar winds, is the hulking darkness that has haunted his nightmares these past months. He can feel the machine-man at his heels, can sense the shudders running through the cosmos at every step, can hear the rasp of the respirator, and despite the quiet insistence that he is dreaming, that these are only shadows, that none of this is real, he cannot bear to stop and face the looming monster pursuing him.

‘Luke.’

It is a whisper, but it is enough, and he slows for a moment, hiding behind the blinding light of a dying star.

'Obi-Wan?’

In the black he can almost see white hair and the familiar brown robe.

'He’s… he’s coming for me, I can feel him, I know he’s looking for me.’

'You’re meditating.’ the familiar voice says. 'Don’t let your fear overtake you.’

'But is it real?’ he asks, and his hand goes to his belt, already grasping his lightsaber.

'What do you think?’ his former mentor replies, already vanishing into the darkness as the shape that is Darth Vader finds its way to where he is crouching.

Luke doesn’t answer as he lunges forward, the blade igniting at the faintest touch.

Vader is ready for him, a red blade shimmering into existence to counter his feeble attack - and it is feeble, it is untrained, it is everything the one-time farm boy feared it would be. But nonetheless it’s borne from something deep within him strong enough to silence his abject terror, and so he is proud of the strike despite its futility.

'Come on,’ he says, though Vader is silent, 'let’s finish this.’

He can feel something behind the dream-shape, something prodding at his mind, searching for gaps. He steels himself, drawing on his resolve, and tries to reach out with his feelings. _If I have the Force with me, and Ben said I did, then this shouldn’t be too hard…_

The battle is clumsy, and desperate, and more than once he takes a hit that nearly shatters the frail glass shielding his mind from whatever seeks him out. But there is a core of light within him, and he clings to it; when the spectral Dark Lord tries again to disarm him it flares and sends white-hot sparks arcing up through him.

He is on his knees, the lightsaber above his head, barely keeping the red blade from slicing into his neck.

He pushes back. Hard.

Blinding light surges through him. Where the power comes from is a mystery, but it is enough to send Vader sprawling backward and the red blade flying.

Luke is on his feet almost instantly, lunging for the spectral nightmare, bringing his own lightsaber down in what would be a fatal blow -

\- but there is nothing there, only the cold emptiness of space and the gleam of distant stars.

He deactivates the saber’s blade, sinking to his knees.

'What happened?’ he asks, half hoping that no answer comes.

‘He nearly found you.’

The response is sharp, and unexpected. This time there’s nothing to see, no face in the stars. Merely a voice in his thoughts.

'What?’

'He almost got to you.’

‘But how - ?’

‘Those strong in the Force can sense one another, Luke. I did what I could to distract him but in the end only you can keep him from your thoughts.’

The would-be Jedi takes a deep breath, drawing himself back into his body. He can almost feel the cold floor of the Falcon beneath him as the emptiness of space melts away. His thoughts are slick and slippery, but he forces them to be still.

'What do I do if he comes back, Ben?’

The silence of the stars is his only answer.


	2. Solitude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Women of Star Wars Week 2015. Featuring some small headcanons regarding Naboo religion.

She is fourteen years old, and already the weight of all the worlds is on her shoulders.

 _This is wrong_ , she thinks, but says nothing, instead finding her way to the nearest terminal and pulling up Sio Bibble’s transmissions for the tenth (hundredth? thousandth?) time. His words hurt, each plea for contact slicing into her soul, but she forces herself to watch and listen and hear every syllable of accented Basic that comes from his mouth. 

Her hands are shaking, and she holds to the curved and polished edges of the terminal as though it’s the only thing keeping her upright (it might be), and she weeps for her people, tears streaming down from her eyes until she’s blind, until the Aurebesh script is a bright-colored blur, until the whole world is nothing but the chill of the night and her own misery. _I deserve to die. I should be dead. I can’t even do what must be done and save my people. I’m too afraid._

When Qui-Gon Jinn had forbidden her to send a message to Naboo she’d wanted to snap, to scream, to rend him to shreds over the disaster of Tatooine and the utter folly of his gambler’s ploy, except she knew he was right, and so kept her mouth shut. Only now, in the cool dim black of the sleeping ship, does she let herself go.  _This is wrong, and I shouldn’t be here, and how dare the Jedi try and stop me from reaching out to him. To them. I left my mother, my father, my friends, my sister. I am a sham of a queen._

A true queen would have never left Theed. She knows this as though it is written on her very bones, inscribed into her soul. A true queen would never have let a pair of Jedi - if they are Jedi, which she doubts after the events of the past three days - take her from her people when they most needed their leader. But Padmé Naberrie Amidala had been afraid, had been so afraid, and so she ran.

 _They want to kill me_. she thinks, for the eighth time that hour and the sixty-fifth time that day. _They want to kill me. That’s why they’re doing this. I’m too young. I’m only fourteen, I don’t deserve this._

_You do. You fled, you left, you abandoned your world to ruin. You deserve everything that happens to you._

_I didn’t know. I believed them when they said Coruscant was the answer. I was wrong. I can’t do this._

_You knew when you were elected it was going to be a fight._ she reminds herself, the argument old and automatic. _You knew you were coming into the remnants of an old and broken administration. The Council wanted a doll they could pose and pull from behind the curtains. You chose to give them hell instead._ But political machinations and corruption are easy. The hatred of some nameless corporation, a hatred she could feel pressing into her skin? That is nothing she has faced before, and nothing she knows how to deal with. Running made sense, though she regrets it like nothing else.

 _I must be stone_. she thinks, taking a deep breath once her penance has finished. _I must be stone, I must be deep roots, I must endure._  

_But endurance is for heroes, and I am no hero._

Across from her, a porthole opens up onto the outside expanse; the indigo-white of hyperspace casts a pale light onto the floor. For a moment she contemplates drawing her blaster and firing a hole in the bulkhead, letting the void swallow up the traitorous queen of Naboo. But that is the coward’s way out, and she pushes the thought away. _I am not brave, nor am I strong, nor am I anything special. Not out here in the stars and the black that would freeze the air in my lungs. I wasn’t special back home either, though they let me pretend. No, this is good for me. At last I understand my weakness and my uselessness against the unforgiving cold, because it is cold._

 _Space is cold,_  she continues, quoting a common mantra reserved for the devotees of the Mother of Stars,  _and I am no hero._

_But I have to carry on._


	3. What If?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written Summer 2015, pre-TFA. I still prefer this ending to the one we got in canon.

“Put me on the comm." 

"Leia, I don’t - I don’t think that’s such a good idea…” His voice is faltering, because he knows, because he could feel it when the pursuing ship rammed into the Falcon and wedged itself into familiar circuitry and power couplings. Leia felt it too, he’s sure of it. 

“It’s… it’s all right, kid.” Han says, each word steady, still calling Luke Kriffing Skywalker ‘kid’ after all these years. “Put the lady on." 

Luke’s hands are trembling as he passes the headset to his sister. He gets up and leaves - she deserves some privacy. Once he’s gone, Leia finds herself fighting back tears. 

"Don’t - don’t do anything stupid.” she says, willing herself not to cry. “You owe me dinner on Corellia, remember? So shake that bastard and come home." 

"How could I forget?” he asks, and there’s an edge to his voice. “Our anniversary is coming up.” Oh Goddess Love, she was going to snap. Because there was no getting rid of that ship and its payload without taking it straight into the grassy wasteland. 

“Listen, Leia,” Han continues, grim and suddenly serious. “I want you to - take care of yourself, okay? And Rey, and your brother. He’s kind of flighty, if you hadn’t noticed. And these new kids - that Poe, make sure he knows how to treat a ship." 

"I will.” she says, crying now, unsure if she’s ever going to stop. “I’ll give him hell if he’s anything less than you." 

"Good.” her husband answers, sounding satisfied. 

“Han?” she asks, her lips fumbling around the words. “Han, I love you.” A pause, a loaded moment that sends her back twenty years, and then his answer. 

“I love you too." 

There’s a faint crackling pop as the line goes dead, and far in the distance she can hear the dull boom of impact.


	4. Forgotten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written out of spite, but still a work I'm proud of.

“Who is she?”

“Who is who?” Mon asks, inwardly resisting the urge to tell Skywalker to stay focused on the subject at hand. The boy was impulsive, brash, and had a chronic inability to keep on one subject for longer than five minutes - _a lot like the other Skywalker I knew_ , she thought, but she said nothing. Her eyes flicked up to where he was looking, and her heart sank a little.

Padmé.  Or, more specifically, the small holo of Padmé she kept on a shelf to the left of her desk.

For a brief moment she wanted to laugh - _surely you know who Senator Amidala is, Luke, she’s all over the holonet, even if it is only tabloid gossip_ \- and then the mirth died in her chest as she remembered.

Nothing had lasted.

Four years of senatorial work, of lobbying and writing proposals, of aid work and ambassadorial duties and volunteering in the lower level food drives and holding court - or so Mon called it - five days a week (twice for Coruscanti, thrice for Naboo) so anyone could call her up on the comm or drop in to her suite and make their grievances heard, of debates and filibusters. All gone. She had been doing real good, and none of it made any difference, and if Leia’s education was any indicator the youth of today only learned about Padmé Naberrie Amidala in the loosest of contexts. 

“Didn’t she help Emperor Palpatine liberate her planet?” the girl had asked during one of Mon’s visits when she had mentioned knowing Padmé intimately, and Mon had wanted to die a little inside upon hearing that, because Palpatine had done jack _shit_ to free Naboo, Palpatine had wanted to wait for a committee to confirm the invasion was true at all. And here he was painted as the hero of the conflict.

As kriffing usual.

Palpatine took the glory and the honor and no one remembered the woman in her mid-twenties who was both a good politician and a good friend, who was only two years younger than Mon but had borne the cares of an entire world on her shoulders and done so without faltering or falling to her own darkness, who had been always willing to brew a fresh cup of caf and listen, who had on more than one occasion been there to put Mon back together after a tough day had left her in pieces on the floor of her 500 Republica apartment, who had laughed and loved and _lived_.

What was her legacy now? Did it matter?

“Um, Commander Mothma?” Luke asks. _Kriff it, I’m staring off into space again. So professional._  She blinks, looks at him and not at the holo on her shelf. Pulled back to reality, to the here-and-now, she reminds herself to tell the boy he can call her Mon.

“An old friend.” she says softly. “Nobody you’d have heard of.”

And that’s the end of that.


	5. I Won't Fall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written to the sounds of the studio acappella of Sia's 'Titanium'.

You’re not going to do it.

I can see it in the curve of your smirk, in the way you gesture to the great hulk behind me, in the pits of your dead eyes. You’re not going to do it. This is entirely a bluff, and I’m expected to fall for it?

Not kriffing likely.

Oh, you do put on a good show, I will admit that much. You preen, and gloat, and as ever you are _so good_  at gloating, and you act as though you are the one in control, meanwhile I widen my eyes and simper and plead as though I’m completely taken in by your scheme. As though your empty threat (it is empty, I know it, because you do not have the authority to do what you are leveling against me) could come to fruition. As though I earned the seat in the Senate chamber with a smile and a wink. As though I am a mere girl with no fangs of my own.

This is a dance, you see, and it’s one I’ve performed countless times without benefit of a partner. There is give, and take, and right now you are coming closer and closer to your error, because I will force you to the edge, I will call your bluff, and you will lose. I shall go back to my cell, and shall die, but when that happens I will be content because _you have lost_ , _you are an old man and I have beaten you at the game you created_.

You press me, and I blush and cringe and let the fear seep into my voice. Just enough to convince you I’m serious, not enough for you to think I am broken. It is a delicate balance, but I learned from the best and, as usual, it is sufficient to win you over. Your next words are harsher still, attempting to pin me to the black-clad monster at my back, and I feint and let you think they are successful as my lips open and I give you the name you sought. Or so you think.

I meet your lie with a lie, a calculated move in this the latest of the games we play. It shall take time to verify, and like all the best lies is tainted with truth. If you accept it, we journey on, and I am alive for a few days more perhaps. If not? 

If not, I may die here in this room, burned or bled or spitted before you. And I shall be content in that, because with my death comes victory over your machinations.

It’s a fair trade, I think. One falsehood for another. I can see you mulling it over, see the wheels in your mind turning, and then something sparks. You straighten. You have bought it, and I have won. Whatever doubts you had vanish, and you’re giving orders again.

Oh.

So you haven’t bought it. Or rather, you are practical. And obsessed, though I am no doctor with a psych eval to assign such titles as I will. The point still stands. I do my job - protest, scream, panic, plead, anything to show that I am still your pawn, that I haven’t realized you have no power over me or the world beyond this murderous moon. It is my finest performance, and shall end with my (very real) demise and the continued survival of all I love. You make an admirable effort, I shall credit you for that, right down to giving the order to f -

\- _no_.

My screams are genuine.

I’m not playing any more.


	6. Broken Things

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I played with some of the timeline stuff here - specifically this is my own take on a brief scene from the Revenge of the Sith novelization.

He’d been given his own room for the return journey to Coruscant, so that he might have some rest. There was a small bunk, and a fresher; obviously the ship was quite opulent (probably due to its status as a consular vessel). He glanced at the bunk - _I ought to sleep. I ought to do something, anything_. He’d been shaking since Senator Organa picked him up, his hands trembling, his vision blurry. Something was wrong. What had happened on Utapau was not a fluke, or a mistake. The Force reassured him of that much. Something was wrong, and if they could get back to the Temple, if they could turn off the beacon, maybe they could begin to -

\- it hit him hard, tightness and the slam of impact against his ribs and then pain blooming through his chest, rending his heart into shreds as if he’d been struck by a high-powered blaster bolt. With a groan he staggered back, losing his footing and hitting the polished floor hard (despite, he thought as he fell, excellent boots). The shaking hadn’t stopped, and in fact had gotten worse, to the point where his entire body trembled. One hand reached out towards the corner of his bunk, and his fingers caught on the ornamental molding and held on as the galaxy proceeded to explode behind his eyes. Something had happened, something had gone into motion, something was very very wrong, so wrong the universe itself was screaming at him to fix it, make it better, sew up the tears that have been opened, undo what has been done, please Obi-Wan, you must, you have to, _you are the only hope_. 

Heart pounding, he gripped the corner of the bunk as the waves of Force-driven agony washed over him. _Lie still. Lie still and it will pass. Wait it out_. But with each passing moment the pain intensified, the knives in his chest shifted, and finally he cried out and gave in. Body shaken by muscle spasms, he curled up on himself, eyes squeezed shut as he tried to breathe, tried to push through to the Force, tried to find out what had happened to cause this.

But he already knew. Had known, in fact, ever since this had started. Because only one thing could knock him down, could incapacitate him like this, could leave him gasping and breathless and on the verge of tears.

Anakin was dead.

He was dead, probably half-burned and scorched by blaster fire, probably cut down in front of some poor youngling he’d chosen to defend while the children fled behind him. (They were almost certainly equally dead. Anakin had been killed in vain. Anakin had died for nothing.) He was dead, and the Temple burned, and Master Windu was dead, and Aayla Secura was dead, and Plo Koon was dead, and Force, I should have died, better I die on Utapau than know this, than live this, than feel the utter ruin of my family.

Obi-Wan was sure he was going to be violently ill.

The room finally stopped spinning after an eternity of moments like broken glass that tore at his consciousness. Slowly, the weary Jedi drew himself back until he was anchored in his body once again and the jangling cacophony of his thoughts had slowed to a melody he could follow. Every breath he took reminded him that the dreadful pain in his chest was still there, and as he rose from the floor he almost instinctively brought one hand up to ensure his ribs were still intact (they were, and he was a little surprised by that). He managed to make his way to the fresher on unsteady feet despite each step sending shockwaves through his entire body, staying upright just until the door could swing open and he could make it to the toilet and empty his stomach.

 _Kriff. What do you do_ now, _Obi-Wan Kenobi_? His head came down to rest against the cold lid of the toilet as he tried to hold back the roiling nausea. _Do I tell Yoda? No. Yoda already knows. He couldn’t not know. And he might be more adversely affected than you. Give him peace._

 _So what_ do _I do_?

His breathing was ragged, a perfect counterpoint to the dull-edged hole in his chest (a hole that does not exist except in the Force, a hole that might as well exist for all the pain it’s brought him) and try as he might he couldn’t calm himself any further. _We have to go back. We’re already going back, we’re going to shut off that beacon, to find out what’s wrong, to make things right again_.

But as he slumped back, body leaning against the closed door to the fresher, he could feel the weight of the truth pressing deep into his bones.

Things were never going to be right again.


End file.
